Blacklisted Online Gambling Casinos & Avoiding Scams

Scams, malware, and phishing schemes. Sometimes you can't help but wonder whether personal computers and the Internet are all they're cracked up to be.

You need an online friend who understands the industry and cares about the value of a legitimate, quality gambling experience. That friend knows how to investigate online gambling sites and track down what players are saying about them. OnlineGambling.com is that friend. We’re here to:

Differentiate between the best and the worst online casinos

Look for a safe and honest game

Keep us close at hand so you can steer clear of carefully placed online casino landmines

What is a Blacklist?

There's no doubt that the prospect of winning real money turns some people into proverbial suckers. That fact isn't lost on rogues who know how to set up sites that accept deposits in exchange for little more than screens full of flashy promises. But how do you discern pedigree and reputation in the virtual world?

Use Your Head

Top indicators of shady online casino operations include:

Suspiciously less than random game events

Failure to pay legitimate winnings

Confiscating deposits without rhyme or reason

Unreasonably slow withdrawal processes

Undisclosed fees or requirements for withdrawal

Flaky software

But you should be wary of other less obvious signs:

Sites based in known lax licensing jurisdictions

Customer support disappearing when you need them most

Spamming customer email inboxes

Unsolicited emails highlighting bonuses that are too good to be true

Failure to compensate advertisers

In a perfect world, online casinos demonstrating such qualities would be shut down. Even in better regulatory domains, casino "groups" introduce and withdraw sites as though hosting a sad game of whack the mole. You need OnlineGambling.com's ongoing research and analysis to stay on top of this issue as it disappears and reinvents itself.

Know Which Casinos to Avoid

When you decide to get in some online gambling, we know how important it is to maximize your time playing. We find that a great time-saver is to know which casinos are trustworthy and reliable and which ones have bad reputations. These listed casinos are ones to be avoided when online gambling, so make sure that you steer clear of them:

Our site is constantly updated to provide you with the best possible gambling sites. Although our team of experts strive to find the best casinos, they’re constantly trying to keep updated with the worse so that you are always informed.

However, the most significant shutdown stories, as well as online casinos and casino groups to avoid include:

Virtual Casino Group manages about a dozen online casinos that offer huge bonuses accompanied by rules that make them nearly impossible to actually withdraw. They treat players and advertising affiliates poorly, with dwindling customer service communication the moment you need to collect real money that you’ve won fair and square.

Teller Processing Ltd operates a handful of casinos that stopped paying their players, and whose phone lines and email addresses magically stopped functioning about the same time.

Curgam Malta Ltd Group presents roughly a dozen online casinos that players have constantly complained about for slow and discontinued payouts, and even unauthorized credit card charges. Unanswered customer service inquiries only make matters worse for their victims.

GoTo Entertainment Casinos operates dozens of online casinos that share a common backend and linked accounts. Numerous players have reported slow and non-existent payouts, shifting rules, and customer service run arounds.

Two directors from Everleaf Gaming Ltd were arrested for misusing nearly $1,000,000 of player funds. The Maltese Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) eventually withdrew their license and shut them down in 2013.

Casinoval.com regularly leads players, wishing to withdraw winnings, on a wild goose chase of promises that payment is "pending".

Three individuals were arrested in the Netherlands in 2013 for laundering drug money through their Netgaming Solutions Company, which operated at least seven online casinos.

The Luckys Group runs dozens of online casino brands that players complain about regularly for non-payments and customer service run arounds.

Merge Gaming has been accused of covering up reported cheating and collusion ring activity on their poker tables, not to mention extremely slow payouts through frustrating customer service exercises.

The biggest purge of all was April 15, 2011. On so-called "Black Friday", the US government indicted nearly a dozen defendants associated with Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and Ultimate Bet. The charges included money laundering and fraud. These sites subsequently banned Americans from real money tables.

Better Safe than Sorry

The majority of online gambling casinos are legitimate businesses, working hard so you can play hard. But it only takes a couple bad apples to induce widespread doubt about the integrity of the online gambling industry as a whole.

No matter how good claims may sound, it's imperative that you consult OnlineGambling.com regularly to stay informed about who you can trust. We suggest that you also report sites that you’ve had a bad experience with to us so that we can always stay on track with blacklisted casinos.

Don't lose precious time battling with con artists so you can withdraw winnings or even simply your initial deposit. There are far too many good online casinos for you to be getting stuck in the muck.

Since 1996 OnlineGambling.com has been a leading site for up-to-date online gambling news, information, tools and resources. Our reviews and guides are used by more than 215,000 players worldwide every year.

We put gambling sites through a solid reviews process that can sign off on all aspects of security, banking, software and games. We'll only ever list fully licensed and trusted sites that have proven their safety and fairness records to the likes of: